


We Will Be Changed

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And Then It Happened., Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Magical Transitions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 08:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17117873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: It happens one night, when Greg is so very tired.This is lean, sparse, almost skeletal. A decision made out of short sentences and silences and years of unstated friendship and affection.





	We Will Be Changed

It had been a long, long week, with too many cases and not enough sleep. Not enough coffee. Not enough food. They still hadn’t found a good forensics officer to work with the team since Anderson left, and this week they’d needed a good forensics officer.

They failed to catch one killer, and Greg felt increasing conviction that they never would. Even Sherlock scowled and said there were too many good choices and not enough clear evidence to make a case. Another, faced with a life sentence and the rejection of his family, killed himself and his wife and two of his children before Greg could put through the paperwork to take him in. The third child had hidden in the linen cupboard and heard it all…but had kept silent as her father hunted the house for her, kept silent as he shouted her name, kept silent as he sobbed and swore in the kitchen, kept silent as he shot himself. She kept silent until Greg held her in his arms, and then she screamed. She didn’t stop until the paramedics injected her with sedative so she could just…go away, for a little while.

It had been that kind of week.

When he finally signed off Friday evening, it was after eleven. Sherlock and John had left two hours before, after Greg had forced them to stay and fill in their own damned paperwork for a change. They’d checked boxes and typed up reports on events, and made lists of evidence, and when they were finally done and the papers signed, they’d gone swanning off to have Chinese, without so much as offering to send some back for Greg, who was still working on his own pile of bureaucratic bookkeeping.

When he stood up his bones ached. His eyes burned. His hands shook with built up nerves and the tailings of a caffeine high and low blood sugar and exhaustion. He pulled on his coat, flicked out the light in his office, locked the door behind him, and made his way down to the car park, as the never-sleeping Met hummed on around him.

The car park was dark and dim. Peaceful. He felt a longing like an ocean tide, to just curl up in the cover of the shadows, pull his coat around him, and sleep, in the safe darkness that wasn’t really work and certainly wasn’t home, wasn’t a pub, wasn’t the Underground—like the old children’s poem said, it “isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.” His eyelids dipped. He was, he knew, too tired to drive. But he was too frugal to take a cab: Sherlock could afford those luxuries. DCI Greg Lestrade? Not so much.

Tired. Bone tired.

“You really ought not drive,” a dry voice said, from the shadows.

He jumped, surprised, then growled, “You bastard. Scared me outa a year of my life, I swear.”

“Hyperbole.” Mycroft Holmes could dismiss hyperbole with a fine and fruity disdain like no one else. Years of dismissing Sherlock’s hyperbole as practice, no doubt. The man stepped out of his shadowed hiding place. “Allow me to see you home, Detective Chief Inspector Lestrade.”

Greg considered arguing, for the sake of dignity and pride. He shook his head—he was too damned tired to afford that luxury. “Yeah,” he said, wearily. “Sure. Car?”

“The driver’s parked down the way. Follow me.” Mycroft turned on a tuppence and led the way, opening the door for his passenger and waiting until he was settled before slipping into his own seat in the sedan. He flicked the audio connection to the driver, gave instructions to go to Greg’s, and turned the link back off.

The car rolled easily, silently.

“Are you all right?” Mycroft’s voice made it clear he was trying to make polite small-talk, in spite of being ill-equipped for the task.

“Mmmm,” Greg murmured, already feeling his eyes drooping shut. “Tired. Sore. I ache.”

“I can offer a paracetamol.”

Greg considered, and hummed agreement. “Mmmm.” Soon he’d been given two large tablets and a small cup of water from a well-equipped little dry bar.

“All the bells and whistles, you have,” he murmured. “God. What a week.”

“So Sherlock said.”

“Had to brag, did he?”

“Actually, I think he was concerned. Or perhaps Dr. Watson was, and Sherlock trusted his judgment.”

“Sounds right.”

“Can I help?” The question was asked with ginger caution.

“Helping already,” Greg assured the other man. “Just get me home. Once I’m in m’ flat I can drop dead and it will still be all right. At least I’ll be dead in a good space.”

“I hope I could do better than that.”

“Already are,” Greg said again, and closed his eyes. Before he could think better of it, he was asleep.

When he woke he was leaning on the other man, head propped on Mycroft’s shoulder, body in greater pain than ever now that his muscles had relaxed and the shock of awareness had taken hold. Mycroft was shaking him gently, trying to wake him.

“Inspector?”

“Mmmm. Yeah. Sorry.” He straightened, moaning with sore muscles and a throbbing head. “Gotta remember not to relax until after I hit the mattress. Before and it just aches too much.”

“Let me help you in.”

He didn’t argue. He couldn’t. He was just that tired. Just that sore. He let his companion help him out of the car, and accepted his prim, neat body hovering inches away as they worked their way to the door of the building…then allowed Mycroft to shadow him up the stairs, to the third-floor flat.

“Thanks,” he said, as he fumbled for his keys.

“Not a problem, Inspector. You should take better care of yourself. You’re over-extended.”

“And you never push too hard?”

“I have a support network in place. Even if the nation pays for it. Anthea and my staff won’t allow me to get in this condition in the first place, and if and when I do regardless of their efforts, they have protocols in place to deal with me.” He followed Lestrade in, taking over the chore of flicking on lights as he aimed with unerring skill for the kitchen. “You need hot, sweet tea, and whatever is in the cupboards to fill your stomach, and then—well, a shower might be ideal, but I would entirely understand if, once fed, you simply went to sleep.”

Greg dropped heavily to a kitchen chair by the table. “Got canned beans and bread for toast,” he said, and watched his unexpected guardian angel move silently around the kitchen arranging his life. He smiled a half-dead smile. “Nice.” His words were short, flat, almost uninflected. “Wish I could have this all the time.”

“You could, you know.” Mycroft turned away from the beans in the saucepan on the cooktop. Calm grey eyes met Greg’s. “You do know, don’t you?”

Greg frowned. “Know what?”

Mycroft gave a lemon-sour smile, and turned back to the cooktop. “Ah. You don’t know. I admit, I had not factored that in.”

Greg pondered, mind slow and thick. “I am a bear of very little brain,” he said. “You may need to clarify a bit.”

“Tea,” Mycroft said, pushing a large mug into Greg’s hands. It was pale with milk, and when Greg sucked in the first mouthful the sweetness sent happiness and contentment spiraling through him.

“Tea,” Greg said, voice making it clear that the mug contained all the wonders of heaven and all the bliss of Sherlock’s favorite drugs. “Tea… Good.”

Mycroft chuckled. “Yes. ‘Tea good,’ Tarzan.”

Greg gulped the entire cup down in one move, and, with a flash that showed the benefits received, shoved the mug back at Mycroft. “More good tea…Jane.”

Mycroft sniggered. Lestrade, revived just enough to begin to focus, smiled.

“Sense of humor. That’s right—I forget you’re the one wi’ the sly, sarky sense of humor.”

Mycroft flashed a Spock-like brow, and bowed slightly, then got back to work. Soon Greg had beans on buttered toast, a mug of new tea, and another piece of buttered toast with a jam-jar open on the table by the plate.

“Honey would be more in keeping with the Pooh theme. But you hadn’t any.”

“There you are. Bear of little brain. Forgot to shop for any.” Greg wolfed down the beans and toast in record time, then dawdled over the toast and jam. He took a half-moon bite, the outline of his strong, white teeth making scallops around the edge in the bread. He glanced cautiously at Mycroft. “So—I could have this all the time, eh?”

Mycroft sat at the opposite side of the table, placing a second mug in front of him, then wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. He didn’t look into Greg’s eyes, but said, with enormous reserve and decorum, “Yes. I did say that.”

“Mean it?”

“Quite.”

“Hummph. Might have said before.”

“As might you have.”

“There is that.” He took another bite of toast and jam, and another sip of tea. “Mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Hummmph.” He thought about it. Then he prodded the other man’s foot with the tip of his toe, leg stretching to reach across the space between them. When Mycroft looked up, Greg offered him the second triangle of toast, already spread with jam.

Mycroft studied the toast quietly—then smiled. He reached out and took the toast, nibbling neatly at one corner.

“You’re off tomorrow,” he said, after a moment.

“Aye.”

“Good. As am I. That simplifies tomorrow.”

Greg smiled at the implication. “So it does.”

Soon he allowed Mycroft to chivvy him down the hall to bed. They stripped, turned off the lights, and slid in together without a word, and Greg eased himself close to the other man, sighing with the pain of relaxing muscles and aching spine. Mycroft drew him close, spooning him, the heat of his belly warming Greg’s aching back.

Greg closed his eyes.

Mycroft, smiling, closed his own.

And then they slept, in the comfort of a certain dawning.


End file.
